Two kinds of good interpreter

At a wedding dinner in Dubai, a guest from abroad needs someone to carry the speeches into English. There are two kinds of good interpreter who might take the seat beside her.

The first is faithful. Every sentence goes across whole and in order. Nothing added, nothing dropped, the same care in the third hour as the first. You can rely on her completely, and when the stakes are a contract or a diagnosis, that reliability is exactly what you want.

The second knows why people say what they say. When an uncle reaches for a proverb, she does not translate the proverb. She works out what he meant by it and carries that across, so the guest reacts the way the rest of the room did. When a joke will not survive the journey, she builds another one that will. For her the words are a means, not the job.

Both are skilled. Both are worth hiring. They are not the same skill, and a good deal of disappointment comes from asking one for what the other does.

Marketing has the same split. There are people who can run a proven approach precisely, launch after launch, and people who understand why the approach worked and can rebuild it when the market, the audience or the language shifts underneath them. A business needs the first to stay steady and the second to find what comes next.

The useful thing is to know which one the moment is asking for, and which one you are.